gate the mental processes by which man could acquire any knowledge at all, and here he declared experiment to be of no avail. He therefore relied on deductive argument alone.

Bacon has hinted that

if he had attacked this subject he would have applied inductive methods to it as to all his other speculations. He had no sympathy with metaphysics, which he defined as a temporary substitute for physics; he asserted that when scientific induction had been sufficiently systematised, metaphysics would succumb at its approach, would (we may take it) form part of psychology, and be as amenable to practical experiment as any other branch of science. For the present he deemed it well to let the topic alone. Religious speculation was in much the same case. He tacitly assumed a vague relationship between religion and morality, but he avoided a discussion which could neither strengthen nor weaken the framework of his scientific system. He was content to describe religion as it was, and to treat it as based "on the word and work of God and upon the light of nature." Reason, he said, must not attempt to prove or examine the mysteries of faith-and these mysteries he identifies with the ordinarily accepted teaching of revelation. In religious debate Herbert was thus logically far in advance of Bacon, and they had few other topics in common. There is nothing, therefore, ungenerous in the failure of the younger writer

to make any acknowledgment of the work of the older.1

In their immediate effect on contemporary opinion, Herbert's philosophical writings were little better than abortive. Although widely read, their significance was not appreciated. While the purely speculative part proved unintelligible, the religious discussions excited nearly universal hostility, begetting libros non liberos. Of the treatise De Veritate, Sir William Dugdale writes in 1674: "It much passeth my understanding, being wholly philosophical." Evelyn notes in his Diary that Herbert's brother, Sir Henry, presented him with a copy, but gives no indication that he put himself to the pains of reading it. The only English writer of the time who attempted a serious discussion of Lord Herbert's philosophy was Nathaniel Culverwel, a fellow of Emanuel College, Cambridge, whose "Discourse of the Light of Nature"

4

3

1 They are most closely in agreement in their references to Telesius, who had anticipated some of Bacon's arguments in favour of experiment as the only sure road to knowledge. Herbert advises young men to study Telesius's writings, and clearly attaches high value to them. Bacon similarly applauds them in his treatise De Principiis, and owes more to them than he acknowledges. (See note on pp. 49–50, infra.) 2 The first edition of De Veritate (1624) was succeeded by a second in 1633, and a third in 1645.

3 Dugdale's Diary and Correspondence, p. 397.

4 Evelyn's Diary, ed. Bray and Wheatley, ii. 36.

was first published in 1652. Culverwel is as powerful a writer in support of the doctrine of à priori knowledge as Lord Herbert himself, but he opposes the theory of innate ideas, and asserts, in contradiction to Lord Herbert, that the suggesting influence of sense and experience are necessary to the translation of our primary notions into consciousness. But when Culverwel proceeds to erect a theological superstructure upon his speculative theories in close conformity with orthodox Christianity, he will have no further truce with the author of De Veritate. Religion, according to Culverwel, "is built upon a surer and higher rock— upon a more adamantine and precious foundation than Herbert's "common notions," and he finally identifies Herbert with those who have "arrived to that full perfection of error .. that have a powder-plot against the Gospel; that would very compendiously behead all Christian religion at one blow a device which old and ordinary heretics were never acquainted withal." 1 In this spirit

"

1 Culverwel's "Light of Nature," p. 226, in the reprint published at Edinburgh in 1857. See also pp. 128-134, and pp. 211, 212. The preface to this edition, by John Cairns, M.A., is well worthy of study. Sir William Hamilton, in his edition of Reid's works (p. 782), justly calls attention to Culverwel's learning and intelligence. Robert Greville, Lord Brooke, remarkable for his enlightened and tolerant views, was author of a work of a similar kind-"The Nature of Truth," 1641.

Herbert was criticised by Thomas Halyburton, a professor of divinity at St. Andrews, who was especially scandalised by Herbert's identification of the principles of true religion with notions current in pagan writers.1 Richard Baxter, in "More Reason for the Christian Religion, and No Reason against it" (1672), animadverts in a like temper on Lord Herbert's arguments, and insists that the Scriptures are the sole product of the Spirit's inspiration, and contain no word that is not infallibly true. "Supernatural evidence" alone can produce a satisfactory apprehension of religion; and there is no supernatural evidence outside the Gospel of Christ. Charles Blount (1654-1693) is the only seventeenth century writer in England who proved himself a disciple of Lord Herbert, but he was no original thinker, but a confirmed plagiarist, and literally borrowed from his master without always acknow

But Lord Brooke confesses that he had not read Herbert's De Veritate very recently, and did not remember it (p. 40); he approaches his subject from a purely Christian point of view, while working out the Platonic theory, that all our ideas are remembrances of a former existence. Dr. John Wallis, the mathematician, replied to Brooke in "Truth Tried," 1643, in which he showed the inconsistency of identifying knowledge of matters of fact with implanted ideas.

1 "Natural Religion Insufficient" (1714) is the title of Halyburton's work.

ledging his obligations. He published a Religio Laici in 1682, which is a slavish reproduction of Lord Herbert's volume of the name, and this had been preceded in 1680 by "Great is Diana of the Ephesians; or, the Original of Idolatry, together with the Politick Institution of the Gentiles' Sacrifices," a feeble adumbration of Herbert's De Religione Gentilium. Not until Locke wrote did Herbert, as a philosopher, receive anything like justice from his own countrymen. Locke disagrees with him at every turn, but he honestly explains his position; and no better introduction to Herbert's system is at present accessible than the first book of Locke's "Essay on the Human Understanding." Locke as an empiricist and sensationalist hunts to the death the theory of innate ideas, but he accepts Herbert's five "common notions" of religion as truths of reason, and in his "Reasonableness of Christianity" he joins hands with Herbert in denouncing the irrational dogmas of priests, although he is content to deduce a definition of faith from an historical examination

1 Blount claimed to have used some unpublished notes by Lord Herbert in his best-known work-"The Two First Books of Apollonius Tyaneus, written originally in Greek, with Philological Notes upon each chapter” (1680), but he apparently only drew upon Herbert's published books. See Mr. Leslie Stephen's article on Blount in the "Dictionary of National Biography."